


My Bright Is Too Slight

by begforyourmercy



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Armitage Hux Needs A Hug, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Enemies to Friends, Heavy Angst, Kylux - Freeform, M/M, Rey is So Pure and Good, found family trope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 15:08:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17583158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/begforyourmercy/pseuds/begforyourmercy
Summary: "How will we save him?" Hux asked, voice breaking."I don't know," Rey answered, "but we'll do it together."In this sequel to To Hold Back All My Dark, Armitage Hux finds himself being torn apart, with Ben Solo back in the clutches of Supreme Leader Snoke under mind control through the Force. With the help of some unlikely Resistance allies, Hux will cross the galaxy to bring Ben home, armed with nothing but his wits and his newfound band of heroes. Hope is a powerful thing, but will it be enough to save the universe?





	My Bright Is Too Slight

Hux stared up at the stars for hours, waiting for a sign.

 

Alone, bleeding and afraid, he knelt in the had expected the Resistance to arrive gradually; lights fading out of the smattering of space above him, landing gracefully like a bird finally landing from a long flight. Instead, they came upon him like a thief in the night - sudden, blindingly bright and astonishingly fast. There was a loud whirr of engines, and within a parsec or two, he was surrounded by Rebel troops, too many blasters aimed at his head to count. Hux put his hands up and waited.

 

One soldier stepped forward, blaster in one hand, torch in the other, shining the beam of light on Hux’s face. “General Hux?” the man said, and Hux nodded. At his affirmation, the man ran to him, blaster butting up against his temple as he was restrained and handcuffed. “General Armitage Hux, you’re under arrest for the destruction of the New Republic, as well as devastation to the whole of the galaxy. You will now be brought before the Resistance to answer for your crimes.”

 

\-----

 

They didn’t believe him.

 

After that first hopeful day of being brought in, it all went gloriously downhill. The little spark of hope that Hux had harbored deep in his chest was extinguished almost immediately; Leia did not even want to see him, much less help him save Ben. She appeared momentarily when he had been caught, and that, as it would turn out, would be the only time she deemed necessary to grace him with her presence. Instead, she left him with her minions, to do with him whatever they pleased, so long as he wasn’t killed. She’d cast him aside as a liar, a fake; a piece of bait to lure the Resistance into an unsuspecting trap. There was no getting through to her or any one of them. 

 

They never wanted to hear him talk about Ben. Every day - they brought him a meager breakfast before torture, that’s how he knew another full cycle had passed - he asked if they knew anything, if they’d heard anything. He longed to have any piece of information, no matter how small. Oh, how he would  _ beg _ , in the worst of his whippings and near-drownings and beatings: _ please, just tell me you’ve found him, just tell me if he’s all right. _ They would mostly ignore him; if they had known Ben, or were anywhere close to Leia, they would beat him all the more. But with each hour, day, or week that passed, they stayed tight-lipped, and he could tell they had nothing. Not that they would let him know if they did - still, he could sense it. They had no news, and that did naught to help his cause.

 

Despite the war being over, the Resistance still managed to find use for Hux. After his and Ren’s supposed demise, the First Order had crumbled rather quickly; those who had not been destroyed after the great battle at Starkiller were now scattered across the galaxy, running with intentions to hide out for the rest of their miserable lives. The rebel scum hounded Hux for their whereabouts, demanding he give up their names and locations and secrets so they could squash them out and finally have their victory. Hux held no love for those who survived - not after they had abandoned him so remorselessly - so he spilled their names readily if he had any dirt on them. They would ask, and he would choke it out, often through a mouthful of his own blood.

 

They beat him. They starved him. They burned his skin, bathed him in ice. Shaved his head and put him in chains - no food, no water, no blankets. He was locked inside of a damp, dark cell at all times, with no hope of ever seeing the outside world again. A plant left out of the sun to wither.

 

But the physical torture wasn’t what broke Hux. He could withstand the pain, the hunger - whatever they decided to throw at him, he gritted his teeth and bore the full brunt of it, just to spite them. It was going through it entirely alone, without his other half, that tore his soul to shreds.

 

They didn’t believe him. So he stopped talking.

 

\-----

 

“Good morning, General.”

 

Hux’s eyes hung open, but were exhausted and blank, and his mind hardly present as the door of his dark damp cell was cracked open. Two tall Resistance men - his usual tormentors, shrouded in shadow - slipped in and slammed the door behind them; he heard the rattle and clank of a utensil on a dish, and let his weary eyes drift shut. So it was time. Morning tea, then torture: a typical day in the Resistance.

 

Hux had been silent for ten days now. Other than screams of pain and suffering, no words went past his lips. No more pleading for Leia’s help, no begging for any news of Ben, not even crying out for his abusers to still their hands and show him some mercy. He shrieked and sobbed, but not a single word was uttered. He gave them nothing more that they could use to break him down. And yet, as every day dawned anew, they kept coming back and stomping him a little bit further into the dirt. They took the little pieces of his sanity he didn’t know he still had left and crunched them underneath their bootsoles. 

 

He wished they would just get it over with and kill him already. They had no more use of him, other than as a vessel to take their cruel tendencies out on. A punching bag full of broken bones and hope ground down to dust. 

 

The two men stood, watching him with hardened eyes that shone in the low light. One of them set the tray of breakfast down on the dirty cement floor, then slid it toward Hux with the toe of his boot. As it skidded sharply across the floor, Hux, folded in on himself in the corner, did not move a muscle. He just stared at the opposite wall and pretended they weren’t there.

 

The man on the left, who hadn’t been the one to bring in the food, crossed his arms malignantly. “Go on,” he goaded, staring Hux down with the lightest of sickening smirks playing at his lips. Hux peered at him out of the corner of his eye but still did not move. “ _ Go on, _ General,” the man urged again, sharper and less amused this time. “You need your strength today.”

 

Had he any semblance of boldness left, Hux would have rolled his eyes.

 

The man on the right, who had nudged the tray forward with his boot, stepped up and did so again, this time much more aggressively. The fragile little bowl and glass trembled, their contents sloshing up and over the sides in messy dribbles. The men pressed in on him, threatening without words through bicep flexes and soft knuckle cracks. Slowly, Hux reached out and brought the small bowl into his sore fingers, lifting it to his mouth with all his remaining strength.

 

The bowl was barely halfway full, but Hux could hardly choke it down. His hands moved to set it back down, but boots shuffling ominously closer made him freeze in midair. “Finish it,” the man on the right ordered, voice low and entirely no-nonsense.

 

On an ordinary day in this endless hellscape, finishing this pathetic breakfast they offered him meant that it was time to subject him to whatever horrors they had planned for the day. Hux, the pain and agony of the previous day still fresh in his mind, was in no hurry to finish his food; and yet he knew that it was inevitable, remembering days past where he took far too long to eat, and the food ripped from his hands as he was beaten within inches of his life. He would be hurt, whether he ate or not, so he might as well eat and get some sense of enjoyment out of his day.

 

Hux finished it, slowly, with shaking hands. But neither of the men moved forward.

 

Hux waited, seconds ticking by.  _ Aren’t you going to come say hello? _ He taunted morbidly in his head, and had it not been for his vow of silence, would have muttered it aloud as well. All it would earn him was a fresh set of broken ribs, but still, proving he had a little bit of bite left to offer would have been worth it to him. 

 

The men stared for a heartbeat or two longer, and then, bizarrely, turned on their heels and abruptly stepped out.  The door groaned shut, and suddenly Hux was all alone.

 

He waited, full stomach beginning to roll, eyes wide open.

 

And then Leia walked in.

 

The entire world ground to a halt, time slowing until it stopped. General Leia Organa, looking as resolute and unflappable as she did the first time Hux saw her face to face, left the door cracked open behind her. The dim fluorescent flow stretched in, illuminating Leia’s features as she stared down at Hux. He could only imagine what she saw: a dirty, bruised and bloodied corpse of a man, reduced to skin and bone, sunken-in eyes unable to focus through the physical and mental strain. She saw a living dead man, a ghost who had yet to leave the body. She saw a man without hope.

 

“Good morning, General,” Leia greeted coldly, maintaining an air of politeness that Hux, had he cared more by this point, would have found insulting. “I hope you’re enjoying your stay here. I suggest my men have been more than accommodating for you.”

 

Hux said nothing, remaining curled in on himself in the corner. He shivered involuntarily, bones bitten into by the hard concrete walls he crouched up against.

 

Leia carried on, “I’ve heard that you’ve run out of things to say. I must admit, I prefer that to your insistence to talk to me. I’m quite busy these days trying to save the galaxy from your regime.” She took a tiny step forward, a slight move that felt more intimidating to Hux than any of the beat-downs he’d ever received. Her eyes, so often famed as kind and empathetic, were steady and unyielding as her imposing presence bore down on him. If there were a hole to crawl into, Hux would already be there, purely out of  the shame and remorse her mere presence in the room made him feel.

 

When Hux made no move to speak - no attempt to prostrate himself before her, lay out on the ground and grasp her coattails and  _ beg _ for her aid in his quest to rescue Ben like he had done the first time - Leia let out a slight sigh, as if she had hoped for just that. To fill the silence, she continued, “I’m sure you’ve been made aware that the First Order is nonexistent now. The Republic is slowly filling back in where your reach used to be. There is still a lot to be done, of course - there is always a lot of damage to reverse - but we’re making headway. I just thought I should let you know that your hold on the galaxy seems to have unraveled rather quickly. I would also be bringing news about a trial, but it would seem that our leadership can’t quite find something horrific enough to charge you with, as well as decide how to punish you accordingly for it. But I’m sure we’ll figure it out eventually.” 

 

Hux didn’t know how to tell her that he didn’t care, and he hadn’t cared for quite a long time, how well his legacy was preserved in the far reaches of the universe. At this point, he didn’t care about a trial, about what they charged him with, about whether he’d rot away in a cell or be executed on the spot. The Armitage Hux that led the First Order on its dark conquest - maybe that man would have been concerned with it. But he wasn’t that man anymore. He didn’t even know who that man was. All this man wanted was to find a way to help Ben, and he was now starting to see that was beyond his reach.

 

Seeing she would get no response from him, Leia turned toward the door.

 

“Oh.” She turned back then, as if there was something she had forgotten. It was here that Hux caught the faintest glimmer of sadness in her gaze - here, the tiniest glimpse behind the mask of  _ general _ and looked straight into the face of  _ woman _ , of  _ mother _ . “One other thing, General Hux.”

 

A deadly quiet filled the room, so deep Hux dared not to breathe.

 

“My son, Ben, is dead. Keep his name out of your mouth, and I might just let you live.”

 

\-----

 

It was days after when Hux gave up.

 

Curled up in the corner of his cell, Hux finally closed in on himself entirely, refusing to eat or drink or even move an inch. Sensing that this was the end of the deeply-hated general, no one bothered to lay a hand on him - a mercy he didn’t think would be shown to him, but was grateful had been extended. He closed his eyes and prayed that soon, he would never open them again.

 

The Rebels came to check on him periodically, opening the door and peeking in - taking time to gawk and laugh at him, as if he were a zoo animal, an anomaly in a cage. They tossed food at his feet, but none of it did he even attempt to touch. In a moment of feverish awareness, Hux swore that Leia came back, standing silently by the door, watching as Hux slipped further and further away from the land of the living.

 

It was dark and dim, and Hux was barely there - a wisp of consciousness, sliding out of his own corporeal body - when the light suddenly came flooding in. Hux blinked awake, staring the afterlife in the face with full acceptance -

 

Only to find that the afterlife looked a lot like his damp gray cell, only now crowded with two men, a girl, and what looked like… a  _ Wookiee _ ?

 

“Hello, General,” the scavenger girl from Starkiller’s destruction greeted, sounding oddly cheery, if a bit strained. She took a bold step forward and quipped, “Come on, let’s get moving.”

 

Hux, entirely baffled, stared at her with blurry, unfocused vision. For the first time in ten days, he opened his mouth and intended to speak, but nothing but a faint croak lurched past his mouth. He tried again, swallowing drily and rasping out a  _ what _ \- but nothing more could come out before the girl cut him off.

 

“No time to explain - we’ll tell you on the Falcon,” she asserted brightly as she crouched down in front of him; the hint of a smile pitted dimples into the hollows of her cheeks, but the rest of her face resolutely retained its determination. “Now, let’s go save Ben Solo.”


End file.
